


on the line

by Anonymous



Series: reddie kink meme [2]
Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti)
Genre: Coming Out, Love Confessions, M/M, Masturbation, Phone Sex, Post-IT Chapter Two (2019)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-09
Updated: 2021-03-09
Packaged: 2021-03-16 04:27:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,537
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29944479
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: “Anyway," Richie says. "I'm talking about porn.”Eddie blinks, waiting for the context. When it doesn't come, he asks, “What, like… watching it?”“No, numb nuts, making it.”
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Series: reddie kink meme [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2201358
Comments: 10
Kudos: 139
Collections: Clowntown Kink Meme 2021





	on the line

**Author's Note:**

  * In response to a prompt by Anonymous in the [clowntown2021](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/clowntown2021) collection. 



> **Prompt:**
> 
> Richie did amateur porn when he was younger; Eddie stumbles across some of it when he's exploring his sexuality post-divorce.

Richie’s voice is different over the phone. It's different when it's late and they've already been talking for a couple hours and he's nursed his way through more than a couple beers and there's a bit of gravel in the back of his throat. Things sound different when they're both too tired to lob insults back and forth and the pace of the world around them has slowed to a crawl.

Eddie likes to have these conversations on his balcony. He doesn't romanticize New York the way so many people do; it's dirty and expensive and the driving is a nightmare. The subway is a cesspool and the tourists, Jesus Christ, the endless tourists. The tacky I heart NY shirts and the smell of tepid hotdog water permeating the air. He has no real love for this city, but there's something about it in the middle of the night, when he's a few storeys above it all and the lights twinkle in the darkness. It won't be enough to keep him here forever, but for now it's alright. It's as good a place as any to put himself back together post-clown. Post-divorce. 

He's got Richie in his ear now, and they're laughing about something stupid. A humid summer breeze glides over his skin and ruffles his hair and makes him think of Derry, of sneaking out at night with the Losers and sitting on the handlebars of Richie’s bike. Of crickets and the smell of grass and the innocence that hadn't yet been taken from them.

His mind wanders. He stretches his arms above his head and yawns and his shirt rides up his stomach a bit. There's hair there, dark and thick. It feels anachronistic in this moment, when he's waxing nostalgic about a childhood he barely got to have.

“When did we get so fucking old, Rich?”

Richie’s laugh is quiet and deep and warm, the sleepy rumble that Eddie counts as his favourite. Richie has hundreds of laughs, but this one feels private. It feels like Eddie’s laugh.

“I dunno, dude,” Richie says. “I think it's not so bad. I'm not as much of a dumbass as I used to be, if you can believe that.”

“I think for me it's the opposite. But… in a good way? Yeah, my apartment is a matchbox and I'm sleeping on a glorified futon, but…” He clears his throat. “Better than the alternative, right?”

“Hell yeah, buddy. You earned the right to be the biggest dumbass in all of Manhattan.”

“Wouldn't go that far. I mean, fucking Rudy Giuliani lives here too.”

Richie laughs again. “Yeah, no, I think the biggest dumbass in all of Manhattan was actually me twenty years ago.”

“You lived in New York?”

“Yeah, for a bit. Trying to do the standup thing.”

“I fucking _shudder_ to imagine the kind of jokes you would've been telling back then,” Eddie says. 

“I do too, dude. You don't understand how profoundly grateful I am that people didn't have phones with cameras in them yet. I bombed nightly, no exaggeration. And that wasn't even the most insane of my string of questionable New York decisions.”

“God, do I even want to know?”

“I’m about to tell you a secret, Eds.”

Eddie’s heart kicks against his ribs. Richie isn't as good at cloaking his vulnerability with humour as he thinks he is. “What? Is there some teenager in the East Village with half your shitty DNA?”

“Christ, I hope not.”

“Richie!”

He laughs Eddie’s favourite laugh right into Eddie’s ear. “I’m kidding, man. You know I've been shooting blanks, just like all of us. Even Bev.”

“Yeah, right.”

“Anyway, I'm talking about porn.”

Eddie blinks, waiting for the context. When it doesn't come, he asks, “What, like… watching it?”

“No, numb nuts, making it.”

“You made porn,” Eddie says flatly.

“Yep.”

“No you didn't.”

Richie laughs. “Yes I did!”

“No you fucking didn't.”

“I did!” Richie exclaims. “Would I make this shit up?”

“Yeah you fucking would, asshole!” Eddie yells right back. “Exaggerating your sex life is the foundation your career is built on!”

“You don't have to believe me, Spaghetti Man, but I'm telling you it's there.”

“There? Where is _there_?”

“You know,” Richie says. “ _There_. The world wide web. The internet, as it were.”

There's a specific kind of tension coiling in Eddie’s stomach. It's one he's well acquainted with, and one he's conditioned himself over the years to ignore. But he's not doing that anymore. That's the point of all of this, of the divorce and the bachelor pad at forty-one years old. Of spending his nights on the phone with his long lost best friend and not spiraling over what it means that he never really wants to hang up. 

“Eds?” Richie asks. “You still there?”

“Yeah.”

“Should we change the subject?” 

He sounds unsure in a way Eddie pretty much never hears from him. When they were kids, Richie’s singular driving force was coming up with ways to make Eddie uncomfortable. It's strange now to hear any indication that he actually cares about not pushing beyond Eddie’s boundaries.

“How did you get into that?” Eddie asks. “Like how does that ever become a thing?”

“What, you mean for barely legal string beans with bad hair and coke bottle glasses?”

“I meant more for an aspiring stand up comic,” Eddie says. “But sure, that too.”

“No one really cares what the dudes in porn look like as long as they can get their dicks hard.”

“That—” Eddie coughs to try to cover how weird his voice suddenly sounds. “That doesn't really answer my question.”

“It wasn't professional or anything. It was more like a wannabe arthouse erotica student film project thing.”

“You didn't go to film school,” Eddie says.

“Oh, didn't I?”

“Wait, what? Did you?”

Richie laughs. “No, man, of course I didn't. My… roommate. One of my roommates at the time. He did.”

“So he came home from school one day and was like ‘hey Rich, wanna fuck someone on camera for me? I've got a thing due next week.’”

“Basically, yeah.”

“And you said yes?” Eddie asks incredulously.

“I'm a very easy going type of person, Spaghedward. If a buddy needs my help I'm gonna help him.”

“Jesus.” There’s heat building now, deep in his gut. 

“It wasn't porn like you see today. It was like… medium core. You could see some shit but not all of it. It was supposed to be about the angles and the lighting and the camera work.”

“So you just… fucked some random chick and let your roommate film it?”

“It wasn’t a random chick, it was a friend. And I didn't fuck her, she sucked me off.”

Eddie squeezes his eyes shut and tries not to imagine it. “Sounds boring,” he croaks. 

“Yeah, maybe.” Richie yawns. “Anyway. It was a million years ago. I think that guy works at a bank now.”

“How do you know it's on the internet?” Eddie asks. 

He's not going to go looking for it. He's not.

“Found it purely by accident. I was innocently browsing around for some chicken choking inspiration and I stumbled across my own cock. It's on motherfucking PornHub if you can believe it.”

“I can't,” Eddie says. “I can't believe it.” 

He's not trying to bait Richie. He's not.

“I can literally prove it to you right now.”

“I'm calling your bluff, asshole.”

“Alright, Eds. You asked for it.” 

For a minute, all Eddie can hear is the sound of Richie breathing. He's well aware that he should at least pretend he doesn't want the video sent to him, but it feels too much like what pre-clown Eddie would do. Deny, deny, deny. He wasn't a person back then so much as a person-shaped meat bag of repression. 

His phone dings, alerting him of a text.

“We should've made a bet,” Richie says. 

“I'm not gonna look.”

“Yeah you are, dude.”

Eddie swallows thickly. He had his moment of weakness, of leaning on the old familiar coping mechanism of denial, and now he's going to be post-clown Eddie, the one who lets himself feel what he feels.

“I'm not gonna look while I'm on the phone with you.”

“Saving it for bedtime?” Richie teases.

“Maybe I am,” Eddie says, completely deadpan.

“Oh.” Pause. “Uh… okay.” Pause. “You— It's not— I mean, you're probably joking but like, it's not the kind of thing you'd—” He clears his throat roughly. To render the mighty Trashmouth Tozier at a loss for words is truly a rare feat. “You're not gonna actually _like_ it.”

It would seem that Richie is more afraid of being taken seriously in this instance than being ridiculed, which Eddie realizes probably shouldn't come as a surprise.

“How do you know?” Eddie asks. 

“Because, man. It's me.”

There is a long, agonizingly loaded silence in which Eddie physically bites his tongue to keep from giving either of them an out.

And then Richie adds: “And there's gay stuff.”

Eddie says “Okay,” like he isn't melting down on the inside. Richie’s made allusions, and jokes, but he hasn't spelled anything out. This is the closest he's gotten to it so far, and Eddie’s not going to fuck it up. He knows that Richie is just as tired of living half a life as he is. They all are. 

“Okay,” Richie says. “So like…” 

“It's not a problem,” Eddie says quietly. And that's the closest he's going to get to spelling any of his own shit out tonight.

“Oh,” Richie says. “Alright.” Then very quietly, under his breath, full of wonder, maybe, if Eddie can believe his ears: “Holy shit.”

Eddie tips his head back and lets his heart race. He’s been working on breathing through the type of sensations that used to send him spiraling. He's not dying, he doesn't need help. He's living. He's feeling.

“It's really late,” he says eventually.

Richie says, “Yeah,” on an exhale that makes it clear he's not the only one working through all the implications of this particular conversation. 

“I'm gonna let you go.”

Richie laughs. “Don't do that.”

“Yeah, no, I…” He stands up from the chair he's been lounging in for half the night and goes to lean on the railing of his balcony. “I’m… gonna go to bed. And I’ll call you tomorrow.”

“You better.” Richie laughs weakly, and it disguises nothing. 

“I will, Rich.”

-

Eddie is hard long before any of the gay stuff comes along. Seeing Richie young and naked with his face screwed up in pleasure is enough. 

He can't even see much; medium core was a perfect descriptor. There's a hint of shaft and a pair of wet lips sliding up and down, but it's relegated to the bottom corner of the screen. The focus is Richie’s face, on the expressions and sounds he makes whenever his friend does something he likes. Eddie’s stomach keeps flipping like he's on a goddamn rollercoaster. 

Twenty year old Richie slides his fingers into the woman's hair gently. There's tenderness in the way they're touching each other, and it makes Eddie’s chest ache. They must have been good friends.

Then there's another guy. He climbs onto the bed and sits next to Richie, sliding a hand onto his stomach. Richie turns his head, then leans in to kiss him.

The lighting is dim and hazy and slightly pink. Richie’s tongue slips into the guy’s mouth, and there's nothing about the move that looks unnatural. Eddie stares at Richie’s neck and the way he reaches over to cup the other guy’s jaw.

And then he closes out of the video. His cock is straining against his boxers, so he reaches down to pull it through the hole. It's already wet at the tip, and a couple quick jerks tell him it's not going to take very long.

He finds Richie in his contacts and presses call, then holds his phone to his ear. He could put it on speaker, but he wants to hear Richie’s voice like he's here, like they're lying here together instead of thousands of miles apart.

He answers on the first ring, voice full to the brim with anxiety. “Eds?”

“You were wrong, Rich.” His breath into the phone is a little ragged. He's touching himself and he wants Richie to know it. 

He hears Richie’s inhale, long and measured, like he needs as much air as he can get. “Tell me,” Richie says in a voice Eddie’s never heard.

“I liked it.”

“Fuck, Eddie. Jesus fucking Christ.”

“I really liked it.”

“Fuck, Eds. Are you…?”

Eddie nods vigorously, his hand moving of its own accord. It won't last as long as he'd like, but there's no dignity left to be had in this situation anyway. “Yeah.”

“Tell me,” Richie says again. 

“I'm gonna come soon.”

“ _Fuck_ , Eddie. You're going to kill me here, man.”

“We lost so much time.”

“I know. Fucking… I know. I think about that every day.”

“I don't wanna lose any more.”

“We won't,” Richie promises, sounding desperate. “You come here. Or I’ll go there. It doesn't fucking matter.”

“I don't know what the fuck I'm doing,” Eddie says. “I've never done this before.” 

“Tell me… tell me what we’d do. If I was there. Just… What do you _want_ , Eds? You're allowed to ask, you know? You don't have to—”

“I want to kiss you.”

“Yeah,” Richie breathes. 

“I wanna have long middle of the night conversations with you without racking up exorbitant long distance fees.”

Richie laughs wetly. “God, your dirty talk sucks. Keep going.”

“I just—” Eddie shuts his eyes and sees a version of Richie that he’ll only ever get to have voyeuristically. He wants time. He wants to see every version of Richie from now til the day he dies. 

“If I was there right now I’d kiss you,” Richie says. “Your mouth and your neck and your cock. I've been wanting to do that since we were fourteen fucking years old, man.”

“Richie,” Eddie croaks, and the sound of it is tortured now. His toes are flexed, every muscle in his body pulled tight. He's chasing something new and scary and he wants it so bad he can feel it in his teeth.

“I should've told you then, but I can't, so I'm telling you now,” Richie says. “You're everything, Eds. You're my whole fucking world.”

His orgasm is a punch to the gut. He makes a horrible noise that he wishes he could pluck from the air and jam back down into his throat, and then he holds his breath as shocks of pleasure rack through him. 

He's masturbated before. He's had sex. He's even enjoyed himself on occasion. 

He's never felt boneless afterwards. He's never felt hollowed out like someone took a spoon and scooped his insides into a bowl. 

He's not sure how long he's been lost in the fog by the time Richie cuts through it.

“Eddie?”

“Yeah.”

“You can take it back,” Richie says. “I can pretend this didn't happen.”

“Did you mean what you said?”

“Fuck, Eds. Every goddamn word.”

“I’ll call you back, then,” Eddie says. “I've got a plane ticket to buy.”


End file.
